Mice.

Thanks for the tip, dcm.

I don't mind mice but the other night I was in our office (on an industrial estate) sitting at my computer when a large rat ran past me . It came from the toilet direction. My big sons thought that I had imagined it but later the eldest went upstairs and it ran across his foot. We put poison down and have not seen it since but we are all obsessed. If My DD goes to the loo she sings loudly (and very out of tune) to let the rat know she is there. Just writing about this makes me watch around my feet. My dislike of them comes from when I was nursing in Germany and they ran up and down the walls between our rooms.

That is horrible nannygetspaid I think maybe you need to get the rodent control people in and block up any holes in the building, around pipework etc.

Here's a rat story, she says, distracting herself from proofreading again...
My niece, when she was about 10 and her sister just born, had a very nice pet rat. She was intelligent, charming and very tame. They lived in London, 3 doors away from a large Victorian cemetery. And it was summer.
The rat cage was kept on the kitchen floor and the back door was often open.
One day my sister was on the phone and announced that the rat seemed to have a boyfriend. it was something about flour on the floor and rat footprints...
Oh, says scientific sister, mmm, well I think you are going to have to have your rat put down. Wild rats carry Weil's disease, you can catch it from their wee, and a male rat, climbing all over the pet girl rats cage will have been weeing away like anything - and the disease is really nasty and potentially fatal. You can't take the risk.
So they took my advice and the sweet pet rat was put down (i guess the vet saw my point of view) . There followed an outpouring of grief. Not just niece but my sister, who cried and cried for days. And also the woman who bred the rat was told, and she was grief stricken too.
I felt bad, but knew that my advice was right. Would not have forgiven myself if children had been made ill. Sharing space with rats not a good idea.

What's the latest on the mouse situation?
been quiet on this for a while.
we have not caught any more and no bait is being taken.

On "the ill wind that blows... etc" front
in my ruthlessly thorough turning out of the loft to find their holes etc have found a forgotten/lost 2.5 Litre tin of paint and a huge tub of tile cement/grout!
Both of which were on the homebase "we need to get the house freshened up for christmas" list so quite a second prize

The charity shop has taken delivery of a stack of unwanted books too...

Probably peeking out from under a floorboard and taking notes as to where the other glue boards are I should think Josie. You may be lucky, but.....

I call that cruel and unusual treatment of a tenant...

In Kenya we had small rats that lived in our roofs and rarely dared to come down into the houses, especially if cats were resident. One hot Christmas holiday, my (then) fiancé and I put the cats in the cattery and went off to camp at the coast. When we got back and opened doors and drawers, rats jumped out and over-ran the place. After I'd stopped trembling and screaming, I got the cats back and the rats knew when they were beaten. I had to throw a lot of stuff out and boil wash the rest.

Daughter No.2 spent 5 weeks here in the summer and on her return to Sydney found that a family of rats had taken up residence in the house. The Rat Man was called pronto and he put down poison and traps under the house and in the roof but thought that they wouldn't be back now the house was occupied by humans again. Luckily they hadn't got into the childrens' rooms and had probably appeared from the newly installed chimney. She had to burn the rugs they had been nesting on - ugh. Australia may be a lovely place to bring up a family, but there are an awful lot of nasties to be aware of.

Still cleaning my house and wondering if I've imagined the mouse poo in the loft [have put the plug in up there, and the traps haven't caught anything]. However, found a mouse in the trap behind the tumble dryer last night [that's where I first noticed them, but haven't caught one there for several days]. Now the dog is home it's difficult to put traps in a lot of places, but I've realised that I can pull the tumble dryer out and put traps behind it without the dog getting near them. They are very effective and far more humane than the glue traps. A friend whose business had a rat problem is going to give me some poison that the professionals gave her. When I said I was concerned about nasty smells coming from under the floorboards, she said that the poison actually dehydrates and mummifies them, so there is no smell. I suppose the main reason for using glue boards is to find out where the mice are coming from, but I do find them horrible. On top of it all, my dog seems to be ill but, having paid a fortune for blood tests etc nothing has shown up; she might just be suffering from stress [I know how she feels ]. I'm quite impressed with my loft; even though there's a lot of junk up there, most things are in boxes or sealed bags, so it's not as difficult to clean as I'd feared. Have now got to clean out the paint cupboard where they've definately been,and have to throw out loads of old paint that hasn't been used in years [always thought they might need it for the village panto, but they don't seem to be having one this year ].

...I'm getting such an expert it could be a career move for me, especially now that I have become 'cold blooded and ruthless'....

Josiegransnet (oh dear this isn't going to raise my stock)
Yes while glue boards (in our experience) really have proved the most effective of traps there is the potential "live mouse issue".
Ahem... oh dear.... A very quick and humane way to deal with a live mouse on a glue board is a .22 air rifle or pistol, (if you have access to such an item) It is very quick -if you scale the mouse up to human size it is like being hit in the head with lump of lead the size of a fist and travelling faster than sound - the mouse really will not hear the shot that kills it.
( OMG that is so going to horrify people I know)

I know it must seem from my posts that I have shares in glue board makers but another thing that is good about them is that they will slip UNDER a fridge/washer/cupboard etc ( where mice love to take refuge) leave the tab just sticking out and you can pull the trap out but large animals eg the dog cannot step on the glue.

On the humane killing bit : it always strikes me that if you define "humane" as inflicting as little pain/terror/stress as possible then a CAT is the least humane solution - they are the most inhuman(e) of killers and will torture the mouse.
A yukky thing I saw once many years ago in this grotty student house was a cat chasing a mouse across a room. The mouse was female and pregnant and in terror spontaneously aborted her litter. She was still caught. Kitty had no sympathy.

I didn't realise that you could put them under cupboards etc. The drawers in my kitchen are [unlike the other units] open at the back; I had thought of putting a trap on the floor but was worried in case I forgot I'd put it there and, for some reason, put my hand there [someone needed access to a pipe there the other day]. Only problem is remembering to look there every day. Think I'd be tempted to drown them if they were stuck to a board. Oh well, better go and set me traps......

The most humane traps are the spring loaded ones — the good old traditional mouse traps. They are even cheap enough that if you can't bring yourself to empty the dead mouse out, you can chuck the whole thing away and get some more....... traps, not mice. We get mice most years in autumn when the weather gets colder. There's no way we can keep them out of our very old house. But as soon as we see any sign of them we put down traps and within a few days the mouse problem is dealt with.

Josie, I wouldn't be able to deal with live mice on a board either! The pest people might have warned you!

I'm sure your system is highly effective dcmg, but most of us don't possess a gun of any kind, nor have the urge to possess one.

Oh bagitha agree that the breakback trap does make a quick end of them

it is just that if you get a mouse on a glue board ( which I have found the most efficient way of CATCHING them) an air weapon is a good way to make a quick humane end to them - professional pest controllers do in some circumstances (particularly with rats) use specialised air weapons -complete with telescopic sights and laser targeting! - but that is going a little too far for mice behind the tumble dryer I think...

Indeed, dcmg! and now you've put that picture of someone blasting mice into smithereens behind the tumble dryer into my mind, it's actually quite funny in a Tom & Jerry-ish sort of way!

If you would like to visualise that situation more bagitha...
then follow the link below
I wasn't making anything up! I mean... blimey...a laser.. a silencer... a scope

http://www.airpistol.co.uk/crosman_ratcher.htm

Hi b trust you had a good one yesterday. Somewhere above i recounted catching mouse by its tail in one of those spring traps. EEEk, it said.
Thank you for sharing the mouse miscarriage with us dontcallmegramps . in retaliation: would you like to contribute to my cooked cojones thread, on daunting foods...

jessM ! it's not any attempt to gross people out that needs retaliation.... rather an observation that cats terrify mice to death and are (that is if you care about the mouse's suffering) as I said quite an inhuman(e) solution

It is a very difficult situation [as I've found over the past couple of weeks. It's really hard killing something [not something most of us have any experience of] but you can't have disease ridden creatures scampering around your house [especially when you have young children around as well]. Important to despatch them with as little suffering as possible, the spring traps being by far the best but, as I've said, lethal if you accidentally get your finger in one. These little furry creatures can inhabit as much of my back garden as they care to, but they're not coming into the house from now on! My main concern is that the bait in the traps is actually encouraging them to come in, because even if I close the cat/dog flap up there's still enough room for them to get in.

When we lived in Cornwall, my husband converted a goose house into an office [he was an architect at the time] and the finished building, 'though wee, was delightful. Anyway, he realised that he had a mouse for company. Bought a humane trap, which caught said intruder. He let the mouse run free in the nearby paddock. Next day - mouse back in trap. After three trips to the paddock, the farmer told him it was the same mouse, doing what mice do. On the fourth re-capture, husband took trap and friendly mouse on a four mile drive and released it in a field near Bodmim. Never saw it again!

dontcallmegramps donttakemeseriously when i am trying to amuse!

Hi gransnetters!
My name is SQUEAK...

I am one of the founders and moderators of MOUSENET
the online community for mice

The human who lives in my house had left this open on his computer and I have to say I am APPALLED by all your comments!
SHAME ON YOU
Why are you so intolerant of us? we only want to:

Gnaw at your skirting boards keeping you awake at night
Use your flour as our restaurant, toilet and grave (all at once.)
Run across your living room in front of your guests.
And so on....

Everyone at MOUSENET is disgusted by your repeated use of the "C" word - it's banned on our site ( I mean C*T)

I hope you all appreciate the difficulty of my writing this as I have to run back and forth over a human sized keyboard and jump up and down

(haha he'll have a shock when he uses the return key - take that human! see how you like that on your finger!

Oh no he's coming back!

ooo? is that peanut butter I smell oh yu-

supernana; whereabouts in Cornwall did you live [apologies if I've asked you before on another thread ? Don'tcallme.... I've got a cartoon drawn many years ago when I worked in Manchester and we had mice in the office. If I can sort out the technology I'll put it on my profile [which I still haven't done...]. It is SO topical...

crimson we carried out two conversions - one in Lostwithiel and the other in Penquite near Lostwithiel. Then we upped embarked on an adventure, settling in Kintyre...in bonny Scotland.